New York
Summer 1991
BELOW THE BALUSTRADE, TREETOPS DRENCHED in dew glistened like ornaments in the budding sunlight. All night, Aleandro had watched and waited for the sun to rise over Central Park, wondering why in all these years, he’d never been able to capture its silent, magnificent beauty. Plenty of times he tried, but each attempt left him more disillusioned than the last. For a while, he reminded himself that landscapes were not his strong suit, never had been. It was people he enjoyed painting—people, with their conflicting emotions, their struggles and triumphs. His art had always been about people.
Even that, however, he hadn’t been able to pull off in quite some time. How long had it been since he’d last held a brush? How long since he’d exhibited in a gallery? It astounded him each time he opened a newspaper or an art magazine and caught his name still in the headlines. Yet that’s how the trouble had started, with an article in ARTnews, which Frank, his faithful assistant, had delivered that Sunday morning, along with his double espresso from the coffeehouse down the street.
Still in his bathrobe, he’d sunk into the sofa, and, taking small sips from the cup, he began flipping through the journal. There wasn’t much that grabbed his attention, save for an article titled “The Death Effect,” which he began reading with only mild interest.
It was a piece of fluff, and halfway through it, he’d set it aside with a flare of irritation. Only the expected names were there—Van Gogh, Gauguin, Lautrec, Monet—the great masters of the nineteenth century who never witnessed a day of their fame. If the author had been sitting beside him, he would have grabbed him by the collar. What about the others? he would ask. If you’d bothered to scratch beneath the surface, you’d have discovered there were many others who sacrificed everything for their art and died before selling a single painting. And what of their names?
Suddenly, however, as he might have expected, there was his name, at the end of the article. Picking up his glasses, which he’d flung onto the sofa, he leaned in for a closer look. Not just a sentence but an entire paragraph had been dedicated to him.
No one has seen seventy-two-year-old Aleandro Szabó in nearly a decade, leading many to believe that the artist is no longer alive. One could certainly assume that, based on the astronomical valuation set by Sotheby’s last week for one of his early Dachau pieces. While this can be in large part attributed to their scarce availability—most of Szabó’s works are in the possession of the Hungarian National Gallery or are privately owned by business tycoon Hans Luben and decisively not for sale—what gives rumors of Szabó’s demise most credence is that nothing has emerged from the artist’s hands in far longer than he would allow.
He let the paper drop to his side. Throwing his head back, he laughed heartily, without restraint—not at the obvious error but because, in fact, what the article said was true. He was dead, truly dead in the way that most mattered. If the world thought him so, all the better.
A sensation of great relief settled upon him, and that same night he left his apartment for the first time in years, to end up here, in Central Park.
It was past midnight. For a while, it all seemed peaceful enough, and he relished the relative quietness of the city, the fresh air, the chirping of birds in a nearby bush. From his pocket he extracted a Cuban cigar and lit it, then reclined against a bench, relishing the aroma. Beyond the gates, some of the windows in the apartment buildings were still alight, and he watched them with the usual curiosity and melancholy. One of the windows opened, and there was laughter, notes of jazz dropping into the night like a sash of velvet. In another window, he spotted the face of a young child, a larger figure approaching behind her. The girl draped her arms over her mother’s neck, and as they retreated from view, the window went black.
He didn’t know why these mundane slices of everyday life stirred him so. Perhaps that he’d witnessed them from the outside for far too long. It was his own fault. In the past fifteen years since Rudolf had died, he’d found himself spending more and more time in solitude, losing interest in the lives of others. At first, there had been a few women, and fundraisers for Holocaust victims, which he always attended. There had been Marlena’s quiet dinners for the three of them, where an extra place setting anchored them to what they’d once been, and larger parties he only attended out of politeness. And Hans. Hans had been his moon and stars, but eventually, he’d grown up, and Marlena had moved to California to start fresh, and more and more Aleandro had succumbed to the walls of his self-imposed prison. He couldn’t help seeing himself for what he truly was: a ghoulish figure like one from his Dachau pieces, lurking in the shadows of late-night Manhattan.
He departed Central Park for home more dismally than he had come.
Later that night, he dreamed of Rudolf. Not quite a dream in his agitated state, but more of a hazy, disjointed catalog of their years together. Rudolf alongside him at every gallery opening, his smile bright beneath a chandelier when they’d gone out after his return from Budapest and he’d seen in Rudolf’s eyes the respect he’d always yearned to see. Rudolf so much earlier in the days of their youth, standing guard over him as he painted the scenes of the camp. Rudolf in the infirmary when Aleandro didn’t think he would live another day. Rudolf years later in another hospital bed, from which Aleandro was convinced that he would rise, asking Aleandro to take care of his family.
Rudolf, Eva. The loves of his life. He’d loved them both so fiercely. All he’d ever wanted to do was to love them, embrace them, live his life with them, live in their brightness. Yet they’d both skimmed the parameter of his life like shooting stars. Burning, fading into darkness, disappearing.
The next morning, after watching the sun soar over Manhattan on his terrace, Aleandro walked back inside and poured himself a tall whiskey. The ice clinked in the glass as he glanced around the living room with a cold, discriminating eye. The place was precisely the way he wanted to leave it: fresh flowers in Chinese vases, bills neatly stacked on the granite countertop, pillows fluffed. Even his letters (few as they were) he’d arranged and rearranged on the foyer table countless times, leaving no chance that they would go unnoticed when later the bellman opened the door with his master key.
The whiskey was warm and comforting, fueling his courage as he began his last task. No thoughts at all occupied his mind as he made his way to the foyer table and ran his fingers over the rich, lacquered surface to the drawer down below. He fumbled inside it, pushed out of the way some old bills and fan letters he’d never opened, a stale Cuban, some loose change. Finally, he found the bottle of pills and extracted it gingerly.
Would he have the courage this time? Would today be the day? He’d gone through this exact exercise a number of times, and each time he’d lost his nerve. Each time he’d taken down the prewritten letters, put the pills back in the drawer, then finished his drink overcome with disgust for his cowardice.
Yet it was what he wanted, he was certain of it. It was. To be free as he’d once been when the roof over his head was mostly the starry sky. Perhaps he needed a couple more drinks beforehand. It was certainly worth a try, even though it was barely seven in the morning.
Soon he was settled on the sofa, second whiskey now in hand, staring at the bottle of pills before him. Summoning his courage, he reached for them, then a sound ripped through the room. A sharp sound, like a gunshot, which set his heart in a somersault, changing his trajectory. He listened again. A swift relief surged through him, realizing what it was, only to give way, almost instantly, to an intense irritation.
Frank. Frank pounding on that brass knocker as if his life depended on it. Only his assistant could get up here unannounced at this hour, but damn it, today, of all days? Cursing under his breath, he ambled back to the foyer in his bare feet, shoving the pills in his pocket. Drawing in a breath, he retied his robe and wrenched open the door.
“Frank, what are you…”
The man on his threshold was facing away, but even before he turned, Aleandro’s words trailed off. That stance, those shoulders, hunched forward a little as if he were bracing against some invisible wind. Aleandro would have recognized him anywhere.
“Aleandro, my God. What took you so long? Didn’t you hear me knock?” An unsuspecting smile spread over the man’s good-natured face. “I tried to call from downstairs. Hell, I’ve been trying to reach you since yesterday. You had me worried!”
Gripping the doorknob with all of his might, Aleandro scrambled for something to say. “Hans! What are doing here? I thought you were out of the country. I thought…”
“Yes, well, I decided to come back early. A deal I’d been working on was falling apart, and I couldn’t very well let that happen. Can I come in for a moment?”
There was no reason, no reason at all that Aleandro could reach for quickly enough, and then it was too late. He watched Hans unbutton his jacket, then raise his hands up to Aleandro in an amused, baffled gesture.
“Well, may I? It’s early, I know, but I have something to share with you that I think you’ll find very interesting. So are you going to let me in now, or do I have to put it in a memo for you?”
The expression on Hans’s face, the way his eyes flickered with understanding and horror, crushed Aleandro’s heart. Such an oversight, he thought now, miserably. Such a stupid, grave oversight not to stash away those letters before opening the door. It took Hans less than a second to spot them. And to notice the one bearing his own name.
Still, for a moment Aleandro could have salvaged the situation. When Hans asked jokingly, in such clear jest, “Are you bidding farewell to the world, Aleandro? Are you finally going to take that long trip?” he should have laughed. He should have replied something just as ironic, not stood there as all the blood drained from his face. Maybe Hans wouldn’t have grabbed that letter from the entrance table so quickly.
But now Hans sat across from him on the sofa—still in his blazer despite the heat in the apartment, skimming the letter over and over—and the way he buried his face in his hands was more than Aleandro could bear. Hans, with his mild manner and gentle heart, had never looked at him in such a way.
“Why?” he said simply. “Why would you want to do such a thing?”
No answer came, only a sigh as Aleandro lowered his head and interlaced his fingers at the back of his neck. “Just life, Hans. I’m tired, that’s all. I’ve grown tired of it.”
“You’re tired? That’s it? That’s all it takes for you nowadays to even consider something like this?”
A sole tear slid down Aleandro’s cheek. “I know this is a hard concept for someone your age to understand, Hans, but all I wanted was to be free. No one needs me anymore here. You have your life, and your mother seems happy enough there in the land of laissez-faire sunshine and hippies. To be honest, I didn’t think it would matter all that much. Lately, I’ve been feeling like a burden, even to myself, and that’s the one thing I won’t be.”
“A burden? A burden, Aleandro? And no one needs you? What’s all this nonsense? I need you, Aleandro; I need you! You’ve been like a father to me all these years; you’ve given me a start in life! You paid for my schooling, you bought my mother a house in Sonoma Valley, for God’s sake! If she is happy now, it’s only because you’ve given her a second chance for happiness. How can you say that no one needs you? Ah, all this self-indulgence has got to stop! Because that’s the trouble with you! You hole yourself up in here, inside your memories and your self-pity, you drink, and you lose sight of life, and then you say no one needs you!”
He was angry, and it made Aleandro even more remorseful. “Oh, Hans. It doesn’t matter now. It’s over. I’m sorry to have upset you.”
Hans only scoffed. After a while he got up and took off his jacket, tossing it carelessly on the sofa. “So, where is it? Where is… whatever you were going to use. Gun, rope, where is it? I can’t even believe I’m asking you these questions! Well, go on, goddamn it, show me!”
“No rope. No gun.” Aleandro extracted the pills, handed them over to Hans. “Like I said, it’s over now. You don’t have to worry.”
“No, you’re right,” Hans said, examining the bottle, and drawing a deep breath through his nose. “You’re right about that.” He shoved the bottle of pills into the pocket of his jeans. “Because I’m not leaving you here. I’m not leaving without you. Get dressed, because you’re coming with me. And please don’t even try to talk me out of it. All right?”
“All right,” agreed Aleandro, and he sighed, knowing that indeed there was no reason to put up a fight. His resolve had been crippled, and he felt drained all of a sudden, beaten, old. He was an old man, no more than that—an old man whose bones hurt and whose heart had long turned to dust—so he shuffled off to his room to gather his clothes. In the doorway, he turned toward Hans one last time.
“Tell me, Hans, why did you come here this morning?”
Arms crossed, Hans regarded Aleandro with that same unabating weariness. “It hardly seems to matter now, but while I was in London, a package arrived at my home. I opened it, and it’s a sketchbook. A sketchbook of portraits, of a young girl. Something that looks a great deal like your work, even though they are not signed. None of the portraits are signed.
“There was…” Hans slowed as Aleandro ambled back to the sofa and plunked himself down, overcome with weakness. “There was also a letter, addressed to you. That, of course, I did not open. Ah,” he said with a dismissive flick of the hand, “it’s probably nothing. It’s probably just a copycat, or an emerging artist trying to get your attention. I can’t tell you how often people try to dupe me into some fraudulent art scheme, but I wanted to ask you regardless if you’d like to— Aleandro, are you listening?”
“Where did it come from?” Aleandro asked, feeling as though he’d fallen into a cavern. “Who sent it?”
“Like I said, no idea. It came from somewhere in the city, via private courier and with signature required on delivery. But I don’t think that’s important right now. What’s important right now is that you go and get yourself dressed and—”
“Do you have it with you?”
“No, I don’t have it. It’s back at my place. Look, it’s probably nothing to get yourself worked up over, and there’s plenty of time to talk about this later…” But he was speaking into a vacuum, for Aleandro was already halfway to the door.
“So let’s go, then, yes?”
Another sigh came from Hans as he waved his hand around in Aleandro’s direction. “You are wearing a robe. You’ve got no shoes.”
“Ah, yes, that’s right,” said Aleandro. “My shoes.” He ambled to his room to fetch them, leaving Hans behind, utterly exasperated.